Essay Film Festival 2017: The Camera: Je, or La Caméra: I, in the presence of Babette Mangolte

Programme

• The Camera: Je, or La Caméra : I , dir. Babette Mangolte, USA 1977, HD video, 89 mins

  The Camera: Je, or La Caméra: I is a self-portrait about the process of taking photographs. Shifting from the artist’s studio to the streets of New York and back into the workshop, the film’s rhetorical structure acts as a form of self-portraiture of the artist during the years 1976-1977. Exploring the technique of “subjective camera”, the film offers a reflection on ways of seeing, and the interpersonal and power dynamics involved in producing images.

• Je, Nous, I or Eye, Us, dir. Babette Mangolte, USA 2014, HD video, 6 mins 30 secs

  The short film Je, Nous, I or Eye, Us is, in Mangolte’s own words, “a mini essay that replies to a question about subjectivity in the 1970s while I was making my film The Camera: Je, or La Caméra: I about taking photographs. The new film from 2014 uses footage shot at the time of The Camera: Je but never used in 1976 and 1977 and adds to the 16mm film a series of titles about a photographer’s subjectivity then and now.”